Elaine Howard Ecklund is the Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences, Professor of Sociology, and director of the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University.

As a sociologist of religion, science, and work, Elaine Howard Ecklund examines social change. Over the past several years Ecklund’s research has explored how scientists in different nations understand religion, ethics, and gender; religion at work; and the overlap between racial and religious discrimination in workplaces. Most recently Ecklund co-directed a $2.9 million grant in order to create a new field of sociological research examining how identities and beliefs around race and gender are related to attitudes about science and religion.

Ecklund is the author of nine books and over 150 research articles. She has received grants and awards from multiple organizations including the National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, John Templeton Foundation, Templeton World Charity Foundation, and Templeton Religion Trust. Her latest books include Religion in a Changing Workplace (OUP, 2024) and Varieties of Atheism in Science (OUP, 2021) as well as Why Science and Faith Need Each Other (Brazos, 2020).

She received a Ph.D. in 2004 from Cornell University, where she was the recipient of the Class of 2004 Graduate Student Baccalaureate Award for Academic Excellence and Community Service. Today, she teaches classes at the graduate and undergraduate levels on sociology of science, sociological theory, religion in public life, and sociology of religion and science. In 2013 she received the Charles Duncan Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement. In 2018 she gave the Gifford Lecture at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland and in 2023 received the Rice University Presidential Mentoring Award. Ecklund is interested in university leadership and in new approaches to mentoring. She is privileged to have worked with multiple postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students in research, and she is interested in supporting institutional growth, both at Rice University and of academic organizations more broadly. To that end she served nine years as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at Rice, founded the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice in 2010 and served as director for 12 years, was president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), is president of the Religious Research Association (RRA), and has served on various university evaluation and research committees.